Jabba the Hutt from Star Wars Special Edition Theater Standee

February 12, 2011

I saw one of these for the first time many months ago, when I had just started actively looking for Jabba items. Someone had listed a group of several cardboard cutouts on ebay, claiming that they were used in theaters for the original release of Return of the Jedi from 1983. They wanted too much for them so I passed, but I had always regretted not being able to get the Jabba standee. Flash forward to a couple of weeks ago, when another seller listed many of the same cutouts, this time individually and with reasonable starting bids. I contacted them and finally found out where the standees were from. They were actually used in theaters during the re-release of the “Special Editions” Star Wars trilogy in 1996. This may be common knowledge among Star Wars collectors, but I was living in Japan at the time and I wasn’t an active Star Wars fan then either, so I had never seen the display before.

The picture to the left is of the entire display (the image is from the Star Wars Collector’s Archive, since all I have is the Jabba section). Jabba is 27″ wide by 16″ tall, so you can imagine how huge the full display is (9 and a half feet wide). They only made the visible parts of each character, so Jabba’s lower half is incomplete, but as far as I know this is the only Jabba standee that has been made. And that’s a little strange since they make ones of almost all of the other main characters. I suppose it’s due to his size — standees are generally meant to be life-sized versions of what they represent.

One interesting thing about the display is that all of the characters are actually paintings rather than photos. Most of them appear to be poses taken either from movie stills or promo shots, so it’s interesting that they went to the trouble to make paintings of them all rather than just use photos. They’re very well done, so with some of them you might not be able to tell the difference from a distance. With Jabba, though, I was able to tell immediately that this wasn’t a shot from the film. The coloring is different, and his overall appearance is a bit different from what you see in the films. Since this was to promote the “Special Editions” of the movies, I find it interesting that they didn’t decide to use the CGI Jabba that they inserted into A New Hope, but I’m grateful they didn’t.

Rebelscum posted an article about the standee a little while ago in their “eBay Today” series (see below). It’s worth a look for some more information about it. The guy who they mention in the article who was trying to sell his on eBay apparently wasn’t able to sell it. The problem with it is that it’s just so huge that most people can’t really fit it into their collections. But having one still in the box might be appealing to some. I wouldn’t have too high hopes about its value, because the market is relatively limited, but you could try putting it on eBay with a relatively low starting bid and see where it goes.

I also have a special edition standee unopened in the original shipping box it was given to to me by a friend that owned a theater. I too was wondering how much the standee was worth. I can’t seem to find a price

I couldn’t find a price that someone actually got for one. Especially still boxed. If u find out let me know. I wouldn’t let mine go for less than $1000. And maybe not even for that. I’ve had it this long. One day ill have somewhere I can put it up.